by

IN discussing Russian-Byzantine relations in the ninth and
tenth centuries, I have been able to quote at length from two
detailed sources; Constantine's De Administrando and the
Primary Russian Chronicle. But on the Russian-Khazar
confrontation during the same period - to which we now turn - we
have no comparable source material; the archives of Itil, if they
ever existed, have gone with the wind, and for the history of the
last hundred years of the Khazar Empire we must again fall back
on the disjointed, casual hints found in various Arab chronicles
and geographies..The
period in question extends from circa 862 - the Russian
occupation of Kiev - to circa 965 - the destruction of
Itil by Svyatoslav. After the loss of Kiev and the retreat of the
Magyars into Hungary, the former western dependencies of the
Khazar Empire (except for parts of the Crimea) were no longer
under the Kagan's control; and the Prince of Kiev could without
hindrance address the Slavonic tribes in the Dnieper basin with
the cry, "Pay nothing to the Khazars!"1 .The Khazars may have been
willing to acquiesce in the loss of their hegemony in the west,
but at the same time there was also a growing encroachment by the
Rus on the east, down the Volga and into the regions around the
Caspian. These Muslim lands bordering on the southern half of the
"Khazar Sea" - Azerbaijan, Jilan, Shirwan, Tabaristan,
Jurjan - were tempting targets for the Viking fleets, both as
objects of plunder and as trading posts for commerce with the
Muslim Caliphate. But the approaches to the Caspian, past Itil
through the Volga delta, were controlled by the Khazars - as the
approaches to the Black Sea had been while they were still
holding Kiev. And "control" meant that the Rus had to
solicit permission for each flotilla to pass, and pay the 10 per
cent customs due - a double insult to pride and pocket. .For some time there was a
precarious modus vivendi. The Rus flotillas paid their
due, sailed into the Khazar Sea and traded with the people around
it. But trade, as we saw, frequently became a synonym for
plunder. Some time between 864 and 8842 a Rus expedition attacked
the port of Abaskun in Tabaristan. They were defeated, but in 910
they returned, plundered the city and countryside and carried off
a number of Muslim prisoners to be sold as slaves. To the Khazars
this must have been a grave embarrassment, because of their
friendly relations with the Caliphate, and also because of the
crack regiment of Muslim mercenaries in their standing army.
Three years later - AD 913 - matters came to a head in an armed
confrontation which ended in a bloodbath. .This major incident - already
mentioned briefly (Chapter III, 3) has been described in detail
by Masudi, while the Russian Chronicle passes it over in silence.
Masudi tells us that "some time after the year of the Hegira
300 [AD 912-913] a Rus fleet of 500 ships, each manned by 100
persons" was approaching Khazar territory:

When the ships of the Rus came to the Khazars posted at
the mouth of the strait ... they sent a letter to the
Khazar king, requesting to be allowed to pass through his
country and descend his river, and so enter the sea of
the Khazars ... on condition that they should give him
half of what they might take in booty from the peoples of
the sea-coast. He granted them permission and they ...
descended the river to the city of Itil and passing
through, came out on the estuary of the river, where it
joins the Khazar Sea. From the estuary to the city of
Itil the river is very large and its waters abundant. The
ships of the Rus spread throughout the sea. Their raiding
parties were directed against Jilan, Jurjan, Tabaristan,
Abaskun on the coast of Jurjan, the naphtha country
[Baku] and the region of Azerbaijan.... The Rus shed
blood, destroyed the women and children, took booty and
raided and burned in all directions....2a

They even sacked the city of Ardabil - at three days' journey
inland. When the people recovered from the shock and took to
arms, the Rus, according to their classic strategy, withdrew from
the coast to the islands near Baku. The natives, using small
boats and merchant vessels, tried to dislodge them.

But the Rus turned on them and thousands of the Muslims
were killed or drowned. The Rus continued many months in
this sea.... When they had collected enough booty and
were tired of what they were about, they started for the
mouth of the Khazar river, informing the king of the
Khazars, and conveying to him rich booty, according to
the conditions which he had fixed with them.... The
Arsiyah [the Muslim mercenaries in the Khazar army] and
other Muslims who lived in Khazaria learned of the
situation of the Rus, and said to the king of the
Khazars: leave us to deal with these people. They have
raided the lands of the Muslims, our brothers, and have
shed blood and enslaved women and children. And he could
not gainsay them. So he sent for the Rus, informing them
of the determination of the Muslims to fight them..The Muslims [of
Khazaria] assembled and went forth to find the Rus,
proceeding downstream [on land, from Itil to the Volga
estuary]. When the two armies came within sight of each
other, the Rus disembarked and drew up in order of battle
against the Muslims, with whom were a number of
Christians living in Itil, so that they were about 15000
men, with horses and equipment. The fighting continued
for three days. God helped the Muslims against them. The
Rus were put to the sword. Some were killed and others
were drowned. of those slain by the Muslims on the banks
of the Khazar river there were counted about 30000....2b

Five thousand of the Rus escaped, but these too were killed,
by the Burtas and the Bulgars. .This
is Masudi's account of this disastrous Rus incursion into the
Caspian in 912-13. It is, of course, biased. The Khazar ruler
comes out of it as a double- crossing rascal who acts, first as a
passive accomplice of the Rus marauders, then authorizes the
attack on them, but simultaneously informs them of the ambush
prepared by "the Muslims" under his own command. Even
of the Bulgars, Masudi says "they are Muslims" -
although Ibn Fadlan, visiting the Bulgars ten years later,
describes them as still far from being converted. But though
coloured by religious prejudice, Masudi's account provides a
glimpse of the dilemma or several dilemmas - confronting the
Khazar leadership. They may not have been unduly worried about
the misfortunes suffered by the people on the Caspian shores; it
was not a sentimental age. But what if the predatory Rus, after
gaining control of Kiev and the Dnieper, were to establish a
foothold on the Volga? Moreover, another Rus raid into the
Caspian might bring down the wrath of the Caliphate - not on the
Rus themselves, who were beyond its reach, but on the innocent -
well, nearly innocent - Khazars. .Relations
with the Caliphate were peaceful, yet nevertheless precarious, as
an incident reported by Ibn Fadlan indicates. The Rus raid
described by Masudi took place in 912-13; Ibn Fadlan's mission to
Bulgar in 921-2. His account of the incident in question is as
follows:3

The Muslims in this city [Itil] have a cathedral mosque
where they pray and attend on Fridays. It has a high
minaret and several muezzins [criers who call for prayer
from the minaret]. When the king of the Khazars was
informed in a.H. 310 [AD 922] that the Muslims had
destroyed the synagogue which was in Dar al-Babunaj
[unidentified place in Muslim territory], he gave orders
to destroy the minaret, and he killed the muezzins. And
he said: "If I had not feared that not a synagogue
would be left standing in the lands of Islam, but would
be destroyed, I would have destroyed the mosque
too."

The episode testifies to a nice feeling for the strategy of
mutual deterrence and the dangers of escalation. It also shows
once more that the Khazar rulers felt emotionally committed to
the fate of Jews in other parts of the world.

2

Masudi's account of the 912-13 Rus incursion into the Caspian
ends with the words: "There has been no repetition on the
part of the Rus of what we have described since that year."
As coincidences go, Masudi wrote this in the same year - 943 - in
which the Rus repeated their incursion into the Caspian with an
even greater fleet; but Masudi could not have known this. For
thirty years, after the disaster of 913, they had lain off that
part of the world; now they felt evidently strong enough to try
again; and it is perhaps significant that their attempt
coincided, within a year or two, with their expedition against
the Byzantines, under the swashbuckling Igor, which perished
under the Greek fire. .In
the course of this new invasion, the Rus gained a foothold in the
Caspian region in the city of Bardha, and were able to hold it
for a whole year. In the end pestilence broke out among the Rus,
and the Azerbaijanis were able to put the survivors to flight.
This time the Arab sources do not mention any Khazar share in the
plunder - nor in the fighting. But Joseph does in his letter to
Hasdai, written some years later: "I guard the mouth of the
river and do not permit the Rus who come in their ships to invade
the land of the Arabs ... I fight heavy wars with them."*[In
the so cal1ed "long version" of the same letter (see
Appendix III), there is another sentence which may or may not
have been added by a copyist: "If I allowed them for one
hour, they would destroy all the country of the Arabs as far as
Baghdad..." Since the Rus sat on the Caspian not for an
hour, but for a year, the boast sounds rather hollow - though a
little less so if we take it to refer not to the past but to the
future.] .Whether or not
on this particular occasion the Khazar army participated in the
fighting, the fact remains that a few years later they decided to
deny the Russians access to the "Khazar Sea" and that
from 943 onward we hear no more of Rus incursions into the
Caspian. .This momentous
decision, in all likelihood motivated by internal pressures of
the Muslim community in their midst, involved the Khazars in
"heavy wars" with the Rus. Of these, however, we have
no records beyond the statement in Joseph's letter. They may have
been more in the nature of skirmishes except for the one major
campaign of AD 965, mentioned in the Old Russian Chronicle, which
led to the breaking up of the Khazar Empire.

3

The leader of the campaign was Prince Svyatoslav of Kiev, son
of Igor and Olga. We have already heard that he was
"stepping light as a leopard" and that he
"undertook many campaigns" - in fact he spent most of
his reign campaigning. In spite of the constant entreaties of his
mother, he refused to be baptized, "because it would make
him the laughing stock of his subjects". The Russian
Chronicle also tells us that "on his expeditions he carried
neither waggons nor cooking utensils, and boiled no meat, but cut
off small strips of horseflesh, game or beef, and ate it after
roasting it on the coals. Nor did he have a tent, but he spread
out a horse-blanket under him, and set his saddle under his head;
and all his retinue did likewise."4 When he attacked the
enemy, he scorned doing it by stealth, but instead sent
messengers ahead announcing: "I am coming upon you." .To the campaign against the
Khazars, the Chronicler devotes only a few lines, in the laconic
tone which he usually adopts in reporting on armed conflicts:

Svyatoslav went to the Oka and the Volga, and on coming
in contact with the Vyatichians [a Slavonic tribe
inhabiting the region south of modern Moscow], he
inquired of them to whom they paid tribute. They made
answer that they paid a silver piece per ploughshare to
the Khazars. When they [the Khazars] heard of his
approach, they went out to meet him with their Prince,
the Kagan, and the armies came to blows. When the battle
thus took place, Svyatoslav defeated the Khazars and took
their city of Biela Viezha.4a

Now Biela Viezha - the White Castle - was the Slavonic name
for Sarkel, the famed Khazar fortress on the Don; but it should
be noted that the destruction of Itil, the capital, is nowhere
mentioned in the Russian Chronicle - a point to which we shall
return. .The Chronicle
goes on to relate that Svyatoslav "also conquered the
Yasians and the Karugians" [Ossetians and Chirkassians],
defeated the Danube Bulgars, was defeated by the Byzantincs, and
on his way back to Kiev was murdered by a horde of Pechenegs.
"They cut off his head, and made a cup out of his skull,
overlayed it with gold, and drank from it."5 .Several historians have
regarded the victory of Svyatoslav as the end of Khazaria -
which, as will be seen, is demonstrably wrong. The destruction of
Sarkel in 965 signalled the end of the Khazar Empire, not of the
Khazar state - as 1918 signalled the end of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, but not of Austria as a nation. Khazar control of the
far-flung Slavonic tribes - which, as we have seen, stretched to
the vicinity of Moscow - had now come to a definite end; but the
Khazar heartland between Caucasus, Don and Volga remained intact.
The approaches to the Caspian Sea remained closed to the Rus, and
we hear of no further attempt on their part to force their way to
it. As Toynbee pointedly remarks: "The Rhus succeeded in
destroying the Khazar Steppe-empire, but the only Khazar
territory that they acquired was Tmutorakan on the Tanian
peninsula [facing the Crimea], and this gain was ephemeral.... It
was not till half-way through the sixteenth century that the
Muscovites made a permanent conquest, for Russia, of the river
Volga ... to the river's dbouchure into the Caspian Sea."6

4

After the death of Svyatoslav, civil war broke out between his
sons, out of which the youngest, Vladimir, emerged victorious. He
too started life as a pagan, like his father, and he too, like
his grandmother Olga, ended up as a repentant sinner, accepted
baptism and was eventually canonized. Yet in his youth St
Vladimir seemed to have followed St Augustine's motto: Lord give
me chastity, but not yet. The Russian Chronicle is rather severe
about this:

Now Vladimir was overcome by lust for women. He had three
hundred concubines at Vyshgorod, three hundred at
Belgorod, and two hundred at Berestovo. He was insatiable
in vice. He even seduced married women and violated young
girls, for he was a libertine like Solomon. For it is
said that Solomon had seven hundred wives and three
hundred concubines. He was wise, yet in the end he came
to ruin. But Vladimir, though at first deluded,
eventually found salvation. Great is the Lord, and great
his power and of his wisdom there is no end.

7

Olga's baptism, around 957 did not cut much ice, even with her
own son. Vladimir's baptism, AD 989, was a momentous event which
had a lasting influence on the history of the world..It was preceded by a series of
diplomatic manoeuvrings and theological discussions with
representatives of the four major religions - which provide a
kind of mirror image to the debates before the Khazar conversion
to Judaism. Indeed, the Old Russian Chronicle's account of these
theological disputes constantly remind one of the Hebrew and Arab
accounts of King Bulan's erstwhile Brains Trust - only the
outcome is different. .This
time there were four instead of three contestants - as the schism
between the Greek and the Latin churches was already an
accomplished fact in the tenth century (though it became official
only in the eleventh). .The
Russian Chronicle's account of Vladimir's conversion first
mentions a victory he achieved against the Volga Bulgars,
followed by a treaty of friendship. "The Bulgars declared:
'May peace prevail between us till stone floats and straw
sinks.'" Vladimir returned to Kiev, and the Bulgars sent a
Muslim religious mission to convert him. They described to him
the joys of Paradise where each man will be given seventy fair
women. Vladimir listened to them "with approval", but
when it came to abstinence from pork and wine, he drew the line. ."'Drinking,' said he,
'is the joy of the Russes. We cannot exist without that
pleasure.'"8.Next
came a German delegation of Roman Catholics, adherents of the
Latin rite. They fared no better when they brought up, as one of
the main requirements of their faith, fasting according to one's
strength. "... Then Vladimir answered: 'Depart hence; our
fathers accepted no such principle.'"9 .The third mission consisted of
Khazar Jews. They came off worst. Vladimir asked them why they no
longer ruled Jerusalem. "They made answer: 'God was angry at
our forefathers, and scattered us among the Gentiles on account
of our sins.' The Prince then demanded: 'How can you hope to
teach others while you yourselves are cast out and scattered
abroad by the hand of God? Do you expect us to accept that fate
also?'" .The fourth
and last missionary is a scholar sent by the Greeks of Byzantium.
He starts with a blast against the Muslims, who are
"accursed above all men, like Sodom and Gomorrah, upon which
the Lord let fall burning stones, and which he buried and
submerged.... For they moisten their excrement, and pour the
water into their mouths, and annoint their beards with it,
remembering Mahomet.... Vladimir, upon hearing these statements,
spat upon the earth, saying: 'This is a vile thing.'"10 .The Byzantine scholar then
accuses the Jews of having crucified God, and the Roman Catholics
- in much milder terms - of having "modified the
Rites". After these preliminaries, he launches into a long
exposition of the Old and New Testaments, starting with the
creation of the world. At the end of it, however, Vladimir
appears only half convinced, for when pressed to be baptized he
replies, "I shall wait yet a little longer." He then
sends his own envoys, "ten good and wise men", to
various countries to observe their religious practices. In due
time this commission of inquiry reports to him that the Byzantine
Service is "fairer than the ceremonies of other nations, and
we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth". .But Vladimir still hesitates,
and the Chronicle continues with a non-sequitur:."After a year had passed,
in 988, Vladimir proceeded with an armed force against Cherson, a
Greek city...."11 (We remember that control of this
important Crimean port had been for a long time contested between
Byzantines and Khazars.) The valiant Chersonese refused to
surrender. Vladimir's troops constructed earthworks directed at
the city walls, but the Chersonese "dug a tunnel under the
city wall, stole the heaped-up earth and carried it into the
city, where they piled it up". Then a traitor shot an arrow
into the Rus camp with a message: "There are springs behind
you to the east, from which water flows in pipes. Dig down and
cut them off" When Vladimir received this information, he
raised his eyes to heaven and vowed that if this hope was
realized, he would be baptized.12 .He succeeded in cutting off
the city's water supply, and Cherson surrendered. Thereupon
Vladimir, apparently forgetting his vow, "sent messages to
the Emperors Basil and Constantine [joint rulers at the time],
saying: 'Behold, I have captured your glorious city. I have also
heard that you have an unwedded sister. Unless you give her to me
to wife, I shall deal with your own city as I have with
Cherson.'" .The
Emperors replied: "If you are baptized you shall have her to
wife, inherit the Kingdom of God, and be our companion in the
faith.".And so it
came to pass. Vladimir at long last accepted baptism, and married
the Byzantine Princess Anna. A few years later Greek Christianity
became the official religion not only of the rulers but of the
Russian people, and from 1037 onward the Russian Church was
governed by the Patriarch of Constantinople.

5

It was a momentous triumph of Byzantine diplomacy. Vernadsky
calls it "one of those abrupt turns which make the study of
history so fascinating ... and it is interesting to speculate on
the possible course of history had the Russian princes ...
adopted either of these faiths [Judaism or Islam] instead of
Christianity.... The acceptance of one or another of these faiths
must necessarily have determined the future cultural and
political development of Russia. The acceptance of Islam would
have drawn Russia into the circle of Arabian culture - that is,
an Asiatic-Egyptian culture. The acceptance of Roman Christianity
from the Germans would have made Russia a country of Latin or
European culture. The acceptance of either Judaism or Orthodox
Christianity insured to Russia cultural independence of both
Europe and Asia."13 .But
the Russians needed allies more than they needed independence,
and the East Roman Empire, however corrupt, was still a more
desirable ally in terms of power, culture and trade, than the
crumbling empire of the Khazars. Nor should one underestimate the
role played by Byzantine statesmanship in bringing about the
decision for which it had worked for more than a century. The
Russian Chronicle's naive account of Vladimir's game of
procrastination gives us no insight into the diplomatic
manoeuvrings and hard bargaining that must have gone on before he
accepted baptism - and thereby, in fact, Byzantine tutelage for
himself and his people. Cherson was obviously part of the price,
and so was the dynastic marriage to Princess Anna. But the most
important part of the deal was the end of the Byzantine-Khazar
alliance against the Rus, and its replacement by a
Byzantine-Russian alliance against the Khazars. A few years
later, in 1016, a combined Byzantine-Russian army invaded
Khazaria, defeated its ruler, and "subdued the country"
(see below, IV, 8). .Yet
the cooling off towards the Khazars had already started, as we
have seen, in Constantine Porphyrogenitus's day, fifty years
before Vladimir's conversion. We remember Constantine's musings
on "how war is to be made on Khazaria and by whom". The
passage quoted earlier on (II, 7) continues:

If the ruler of Alania does not keep the peace with the
Khazars but considers the friendship of the Emperor of
the Romans to be of greater value to him, then, if the
Khazars do not choose to maintain friendship and peace
with the Emperor, the Alan can do them great harm. He can
ambush their roads and attack them when they are off
their guard on their route to Sarkel and to "the
nine regions" and to Cherson ... Black Bulgaria [the
Volga Bulgars] is also in a position to make war on the
Khazars.14

Toynbee, after quoting this passage, makes the following,
rather touching comment:

If this passage in Constantine Porphyrogenitus's manual
for the conduct of the East Roman Imperial Government's
foreign relations had ever fallen into the hands of the
Khazar Khaqan and his ministers, they would have been
indignant. They would have pointed out that nowadays
Khazaria was one of the most pacific states in the world,
and that, if she had been more warlike in her earlier
days, her arms had never been directed against the East
Roman Empire. The two powers had, in fact, never been at
war with each other, while, on the other hand, Khazaria
had frequently been at war with the East Roman Empire's
enemies, and this to the Empire's signal advantage.
Indeed, the Empire may have owed it to the Khazars that
she had survived the successive onslaughts of the Sasanid
Persian Emperor Khusraw II Parviz and the Muslim
Arabs.... And thereafter the pressure on the Empire of
the Arabs' onslaught had been relieved by the vigour of
the Khazars' offensive- defensive resistance to the
Arabs' advance towards the Caucasus. The friendship
between Khazaria and the Empire had been symbolized and
sealed in two marriage-alliances between their respective
Imperial families. What, then, had been in Constantine's
mind when he had been thinking out ways of tormenting
Khazaria by inducing her neighbours to fall upon her?15

The answer to Toynbee's rhetorical question is obviously that
the Byzantines were inspired by Realpolitik - and that,
as already said, theirs was not a sentimental age. Nor is ours.

6

Nevertheless, it turned out to be a short-sighted policy. To
quote Bury once more:

The first principle of Imperial policy in this quarter of
the world was the maintenance of peace with the Khazars.
This was the immediate consequence of the geographical
position of the Khazar Empire, lying as it did between
the Dnieper and the Caucasus. From the seventh century,
when Heraclius had sought the help of the Khazars against
Persia, to the tenth, in which the power of Itil
declined, this was the constant policy of the Emperors.
It was to the advantage of the Empire that the Chagan
should exercise an effective control over his barbarian
neighbours.16

This "effective control" was now to be transferred
from the Khazar Kagan to the Rus Kagan, the Prince of Kiev. But
it did not work. The Khazars were a Turkish tribe of the steppes,
who had been able to cope with wave after wave of Turkish and
Arab invaders; they had resisted and subdued the Bulgars, Burtas,
Pechenegs, Ghuzz, and so on. The Russians and their Slav subjects
were no match for the nomad warriors of the steppes, their mobile
strategy and guerilla tactics.*[The most outstanding Russian epic
poem of the period, "The Lay of Igor's Host", describes
one of the disastrous campaigns of the Russians against the
Ghuzz.] As a result of constant nomad pressure, the centres of
Russian power were gradually transferred from the southern
steppes to the wooded north, to the principalities of Galiczia,
Novgorod and Moscow. The Byzantines had calculated that Kiev
would take over the role of Itil as the guardian of Eastern
Europe and centre of trade; instead, Kiev went into rapid
decline. It was the end of the first chapter of Russian history,
followed by a period of chaos, with a dozen independent
principalities waging endless wars against each other. .This created a power vacuum,
into which poured a new wave of conquering nomads - or rather a
new off-shoot of our old friends the Ghuzz, whom Ibn Fadlan had
found even more abhorrent than the other Barbarian tribes which
he was obliged to visit. These "pagan and godless
foes", as the Chronicle describes them, were called Polovtsi
by the Russians, Kumans by the Byzantines, Kun by the Hungarians,
Kipchaks by their fellow Turks. They ruled the steppes as far as
Hungary from the late eleventh to the thirteenth century (when
they, in turn, were swamped by the Mongol invasion).*[One
substantial branch of the Kumans, fleeing from the Mongols, was
granted asylum in Hungary in 1241, and merged with the native
population. "Kun" is still a frequent surname in
Hungary.] They also fought several wars against the Byzantines.
Another branch of the Ghuzz, the Seljuks (named after their
ruling dynasty) destroyed a huge Byzantine army in the historic
battle of Manzikert (1071) and captured the Emperor Romanus IV
Diogenes. Henceforth the Byzantines were unable to prevent the
Turks from gaining control of most provinces of Asia Minor - the
present-day Turkey - which had previously been the heartland of
the East Roman Empire. .One
can only speculate whether history would have taken a different
course if Byzantium had not abandoned its traditional policy,
maintained throughout the three previous centuries, of relying on
the Khazar stronghold against the Muslim, Turkish and Viking
invaders. Be that as it may, Imperial Realpolitik turned out to
have been not very realistic.

7

During the two centuries of Kuman rule, followed by the Mongol
invasion, the eastern steppes were once more plunged into the
Dark Ages, and the later history of the Khazars is shrouded in
even deeper obscurity than their origin. .The references to the Khazar
state in its final period of decline are found mainly in Muslim
sources; but they are, as we shall see, so ambiguous that almost
every name, date and geographical indication is open to several
interpretations. Historians, famished for facts, have nothing
left but a few bleached bones to gnaw at like starving
bloodhounds, in the forlorn hope of finding some hidden morsel to
sustain them. .In the
light of what has been said before, it appears that the decisive
event precipitating the decline of Khazar power was not
Svyatoslav's victory, but Vladimir's conversion. How important
was in fact that victory, which nineteenth-century
historians*[Following a tradition set by Fraehn in 1822, in the Memnoirs
of the Russian Academy.] habitually equated with the end of
the Khazar state? We remember that the Russian Chronicle mentions
only the destruction of Sarkel, the fortress, but not the
destruction of Itil, the capital. That Itil was indeed sacked and
devastated we know from several Arab sources, which are too
insistent to be ignored; but when and by whom it was sacked is by
no means clear. Ibn Hawkal, the principal source, says it was
done by the Rus who "utterly destroyed Khazaran, Samandar
and Itil" - apparently believing that Khazaran and Itil were
different towns, whereas we know that they were one twin-town;
and his dating of the event differs from the Russian Chronicle's
dating of the fall of Sarkel which Ibn Hawkal does not mention at
all, just as the Chronicle does not mention the destruction of
Itil. Accordingly, Marquart suggested that Itil was sacked not by
Svyatoslav's Rus, who only got as far as Sarkel, but by some
fresh wave of Vikings. To complicate matters a little more, the
second Arab source, ibn Miskawayh, says that it was a body of
"Turks" which descended on Khazaria in the critical
year 965. By "Turks" he may have meant the Rus, as
Barthold maintained. But it could also have been a marauding
horde of Pechenegs, for instance. It seems that we shall never
know who destroyed Itil, however long we chew the bones..And how seriously was it
destroyed? The principal source, Ibn Hawkal, first speaks of the
"utter destruction" of Itil, but then he also says,
writing a few years later, that "Khazaran is still the
centre on which the Rus trade converges". Thus the phrase
"utter destruction" may have been an exaggeration. This
is the more likely because he also speaks of the "utter
destruction" of the town of Bulghar, capital of the Volga
Bulgars. Yet the damage which the Rus caused in Bulghar could not
have been too important, as we have coins that were minted there
in the year 976-7 - only about ten years after Svyatoslav's raid;
and in the thirteenth century Buighar was still an important
city. As Dunlop put it:

The ultimate source of all statements that the Russians
destroyed Khazaria in the tenth century is no doubt
IbnHawkal ... Ibn Hawkal, however, speaks as positively
of the destruction of Bulghar on the middle Volga. It is
quite certain that at the time of the Mongol attacks in
the thirteenth century Bulghar was a flourishing
cornmunity. Was the ruin of Khazaria also temporary?17

It obviously was. Khazaran-Itil, and the other towns of the
Khazars, consisted mostly of tents, wooden dwellings and
"round houses" built of mud, which were easily
destroyed and easily rebuilt; only the royal and public buildings
were of brick..The damage
done must nevertheless have been serious, for several Arab
chroniclers speak of a temporary exodus of the population to the
Caspian shore or islands. Thus Ibn Hawkal says the Khazars of
Itil fled from the Rus to one of the islands of the "naphta
coast" [Baku], but later returned to Itil and Khazaran with
the aid of the Muslim Shah of Shirwan. This sounds plausible
since the people of Shirwan had no love for the Rus who had
plundered their shores earlier on. Other Arab chroniclers, Ibn
Miskawayh and Muqaddasi (writing later than Ibn HIawkal), also
speak of an exodus of Khazars and their return with Muslim help.
According to Ibn Miskawayh, as a price for this help "they
all adopted Islam with the exception of their king".
Muquadassi has a different version, which does not refer to the
Rus invasion; he only says that the inhabitants of the Khazar
town went down to the sea and came back converted to Islam. The
degree of his reliability is indicated by the fact that he
describes Bulghar as being closer to the Caspian than Itil, which
amounts to placing Glasgow south of London.*[Yet one modern
authority, Barthold, called him "one of the greatest
geographers of all time".[Quoted by Dunlop (1954), p. 245]] .In spite of the confused and
biased nature of these accounts, which seems all too obvious,
there is probably some truth in them. The psychological shock of
the invasion, the flight to the sea, and the necessity of buying
Muslim help may have led to some deal which gave the Muslim
community in Khazaria a greater say in the affairs of state; we
remember a similar deal with Marwan two centuries earlier (I, 7),
which involved the Kagan himself, but left no mark on Khazar
history..According to yet
another Arab source - Biruni, who died in 1048 - Itil, in his
time, was in ruins - or rather, once more in ruins.18 It was
rebuilt again, but henceforth it went under the name of
Saksin.*["The probability is that Saksin was identical with,
or at least at no great distance from Khazaran-ltil, and the name
may be the older Sarisshin revived" (Dunlop, P.248, quoting
Minorski).] It figures repeatedly in the chronicles well into the
twelfth century as "a large town on the Volga, surpassed by
none in Turkestan",19 and eventually, according to one
source, became the victim of inundations. Another century later
the Mongol ruler Batu built his capital on its site.20 .In summing up what the Russian
Chronicle and the Arab sources tell us about the catastrophe of
965, we can say that Itil was devastated to an unknown extent by
the Rus or some other invaders, but rebuilt more than once; and
that the Khazar state emerged from the ordeal considerably
weakened. But there can be little doubt that inside its shrunken
frontiers it survived for at least another two hundred years,
i.e., to the middle of the twelfth century, and perhaps - though
more doubtfully - until the middle of the thirteenth.

8

The first non-Arab mention of Khazaria after the fatal year
965 seems to occur in a travel report by Ibrahim Ibn Jakub, the
Spanish-Jewish ambassador to Otto the Great, who, writing
probably in 973, describes the Khazars as still flourishing in
his time.21 Next in chronological order is the account in the
Russian Chronicle of Jews from Khazaria arriving in Kiev AD 986,
in their misfired attempt to convert Vladimir to their faith. .As we enter the eleventh
century, we read first of the already mentioned joint
Byzantine-Rus campaign of 1016 against Khazaria, in which the
country was once more defeated. The event is reported by a fairly
reliable source, the twelfth-century Byzantine chronicler
Cedrenus.22 A considerable force was apparently needed, for
Cedrenus speaks of a Byzantine fleet, supported by an army of
Russians. The Khazars evidently had the qualities of a
Jack-in-the-Box, derived from their Turkish origin, or Mosaic
faith, or both. Cedrenus also says that the name of the defeated
Khazar leader was Georgius Tzul. Georgius is a Christian name; we
know from an earlier report that there were Christians as well as
Muslims in the Kagan's army. .The
next mention of the Khazars is a laconic entry in the Russian
Chronicle for the year 1023, according to which "[Prince]
Mtislav marched against his brother [Prince] Yaroslav with a
force of Khazars and Kasogians".*[The Kasogians or Kashaks
were a Caucasian tribe under Khazar rule and may or may not have
been the ancestors of the Cossacks.] Now Mtislav was the ruler of
the shortlived principality of Tmutorakan, centred on the Khazar
town of Tamatarkha (now Taman) on the eastern side of the
straights of Kerch. This, as already said, was the only Khazar
territory that the Rus occupied after their victory of 965. The
Khazars in Mtislav's army were thus probably levied from the
local population by the Russian prince. lSeven years later (AD
1030) a Khazar army is reported to have defeated a Kurdish
invading force, killed 10000 of its men and captured their
equipment. This would be added evidence that the Khazars were
still very much alive and kicking, if one could take the report
at face value. But it comes from a single twelfthcentury Arab
source, ibn-al-Athir, not considered very reliable. .Plodding on in our chronology,
anxious to pick up what morsels of evidence are left, we come
across a curious tale about an obscure Christian saint,
Eustratius. Around AD 1100, he was apparently a prisoner in
Cherson, in the Crimea, and was ill-treated by his "Jewish
master", who forced ritual Passover food on him.23 One need
not put much trust in the authenticity of the story (St
Eustratius is said to have survived fifteen days on the cross);
the point is that it takes a strong Jewish influence in the town
for granted - in Cherson of all places, a town nominally under
Christian rule, which the Byzantines tried to deny to the
Khazars, which was conquered by Vladimir but reverted later
(circa 990) to Byzantium. .They
were still equally powerful in Tinutorakan. For the year 1079 the
Russian Chronicle has an obscure entry: "The Khazars [of
Tmutorakan] took Oleg prisoner and shipped him overseas to
Tsargrad [Constantinople]." That is all. Obviously the
Byzantines were engaged in one of their cloak-and- dagger
intrigues, favouring one Russian prince against his competitors.
But we again find that the Khazars must have wielded considerable
power in this Russian town, if they were able to capture and
dispatch a Russian prince. Four years later Oleg, having come to
terms with the Byzantines, was allowed to return to Tmutorakan
where "he slaughtered the Khazars who had counseled the
death of his brother and had plotted against himself".
Oleg's brother Roman had actually been killed by the
Kipchak-Kumans in the same year as the Khazars captured Oleg. Did
they also engineer his brother's murder by the Kumans? Or were
they victims of the Byzantines' Macchiavellian game of playing
off Khazars and Rus against each other? At any rate, we are
approaching the end of the eleventh century, and they are still
very much on the scene..A
few years later, sub anno 1106, the Russian Chronicle
has another laconic entry, according to which the Polovtsi, i.e.,
the Kumans, raided the vicinity of Zaretsk (west of Kiev), and
the Russian prince sent a force out to pursue them, under the
command of the three generals Yan, Putyata and "Ivan, the
Khazar". This is the last mention of the Khazars in the Old
Russian Chronicle, which stops ten years later, in 1116..But in the second half of the
twelfth century, two Persian poets, Khakani (circa
1106-90) and the better-known Nizami (circa 1141-1203)
mention in their epics a joint Khazar-Rus invasion of Shirwan
during their lifetime. Although they indulged in the writing of
poetry, they deserve to be taken seriously as they spent most of
their lives as civil servants in the Caucasus, and had an
intimate knowledge of Caucasian tribes. Khakani speaks of
"Dervent Khazars" - Darband being the defile or
"turnstile" between the Caucasus and the Black Sea,
through which the Khazars used to raid Georgia in the good o1d
days of the seventh century, before they developed a more sedate
style of life. Did they revert, towards the end, to the unsettled
nomad-warrior habits of their youth? .After - or possibly before -
these Persian testimonies, we have the tantalizingly short and
grumpy remarks of that famed Jewish traveller, Rabbi Petachia of
Regensburg, quoted earlier on (II, 8). We remember that he was so
huffed by the lack of Talmudic learning among the Khazar Jews of
the Crimean region that when he crossed Khazaria proper, he only
heard "the wailing of women and the barking of dogs".
Was this merely a hyperbole to express his displeasure, or was he
crossing a region devastated by a recent Kuman raid? The date is
between 1170 and 1185; the twelfth century was drawing to its
close, and the Kumans were now the omnipresent rulers of the
steppes. .As we enter the
thirteenth century, the darkness thickens, and even our meagre
sources dry up. But there is at least one reference which comes
from an excellent witness. It is the last mention of the Khazars
as a nation, and is dated between 1245-7. By that time the
Mongols had already swept the Kumans out of Eurasia and
established the greatest nomad empire the world had as yet seen,
extending from Hungary to China..In
1245, Pope Innocent IVsent a mission to Batu Khan, grandson of
Jinghiz Khan, ruler of the western part of the Mongol Empire, to
explore the possibilities of an understanding with this new world
power - and also no doubt to obtain information about its
military strength. Head of this mission was the sixty-year-old
Franciscan friar, Joannes de Plano Carpini. He was a contemporary
and disciple of St Francis of Assisi, but also an experienced
traveller and Church diplomat who had held high offices in the
hierarchy. The mission set out on Easter day 1245 from Cologne,
traversed Germany, crossed the Dnieper and the Don, and arrived
one year later at the capital of Batu Khan and his Golden Horde
in the Volga estuary: the town of Sarai Batu, alias Saksin, alias
Itil. .After his return
to the west, Carpini wrote his celebrated Historica Mongolorum.
It contains, amidst a wealth of historical, ethnographical and
military data, also a list of the people living in the regions
visited by him. In this list, enumerating the people of the
northern Caucasus, he mentions, along with the Alans and
Circassians, the "Khazars observing theJewish
religion". It is, as already said, the last known mention of
them before the curtain falls. .But
it took a long time until their memory was effaced. Genovese and
Venetian merchants kept referring to the Crimea as
"Gazaria" and that name occurs in Italian documents as
late as the sixteenth century. This was, however, by that time
merely a geographical designation, commemorating a vanished
nation.

9

Yet even after their political power was broken, they left
marks of Khazar-Jewish influence in unexpected places, and on a
variety of people. .Among
them were the Seljuk, who may be regarded as the true founders of
Muslim Turkey. Towards the end of the tenth century, this other
offshoot of the Ghuzz had moved southwards into the vicinity of
Bokhara, from where they were later to erupt into Byzantine Asia
Minor and colonize it. They do not enter directly into our story,
but they do so through a back-door, as it were, for the great
Seljuk dynasty seems to have been intimately linked with the
Khazars. This Khazar connection is reported by Bar Hebracus
(1226-86), one of the greatest among Syriac writers and scholars;
as the name indicates, he was of Jewish origin, but converted to
Christianity, and ordained a bishop at the age of twenty. .Bar Hebraeus relates that
Seljuk's father, Tukak, was a commander in the army of the Khazar
Kagan, and that after his death, Seljuk himself, founder of the
dynasty, was brought up at the Kagan's court. But he was an
impetuous youth and took liberties with the Kagan, to which the
Katoun - the queen - objected; as a result Seljuk had to leave,
or was banned from the court.24

Another contemporary source, ibn-al-Adim's History of
Aleppo, also speaks of Seljuk's father as "one of the
notables of the Khazar Turks";25 while a third, Ibn
Hassul,26 reports that Seljuk "struck the King of the
Khazars with his sword and beat him with a mace which he had in
his hand...." We also remember the strong ambivalent
attitude of the Ghuzz towards the Khazars, in Ibn Fadlan's
travellogue. .Thus there
seems to have been an intimate relationship between the Khazars
and the founders of the Seljuk dynasty, followed by a break. This
was probably due to the Seljuks' conversion to Islam (while the
other Ghuzz tribes, such as the Kumans, remained pagans).
Nevertheless, the Khazar-Judaic influence prevailed for some time
even after the break. Among the four sons of Seljuk, one was
given the exclusively Jewish name of Israel; and one grandson was
called Daud (David). Dunlop, usually a very cautious author,
remarks:

In view of what has already been said, the suggestion is
that these names are due to the religious influence among
the leading families of the Ghuzz of the dominant
Khazars. The "house of worship" among the Ghuzz
mentioned by Qazwini might well have been a synagogue.27

We may add here that - according to Artamonov - specifically
Jewish names also occurred among that other Ghuzz branch, the
Kumans. The sons of the Kuman Prince Kobiak were called Isaac and
Daniel.

10

Where the historians' resources give out, legend and folklore
provide useful hints. .The
Primary Russian Chronicle was compiled by monks; it is saturated
with religious thought and long biblical excursions. But parallel
with the ecclesiastical writings on which it is based, the Kiev
period also produced a secular literature - the so-called bylina,
heroic epics or folk-songs, mostly concerned with the deeds of
great warriors and semi-legendary princes. The "Lay of
Igor's Host", already mentioned, about that leader's defeat
by the Kumans, is the best known among them. The bylina
were transmitted by oral tradition and - according to Vernadsky
"were still chanted by peasants in remote villages of
northern Russia in the beginning of the twentieth
century".28 .In
striking contrast to the Russian Chronicle, these epics do not
mention by name the Khazars or their country; instead they speak
of the "country of the Jews" (Zemlya Jidovskaya),
and of its inhabitants as "Jewish heroes" (Jidovin
bogatir) who ruled the steppes and fought the armies of the
Russian princes. One such hero, the epics tell us, was a giant
Jew, who came "from the Zemlya Jidovskaya to the
steppes of Tsetsar under Mount Sorochin, and only the bravery of
Vladimir's general, Ilya Murometz, saved Vladimir's army from the
Jews".29 There are several versions of this tale, and the
search for the whereabouts of Tsetsar and Mount Sorochin provided
historians with another lively game. But, as Poliak has pointed
out, "the point to retain is that in the eyes of the Russian
people the neighbouring Khazaria in its final period was simply
'the Jewish state', and its army was an army of Jews".30
This popular Russian view differs considerably from the tendency
among Arab chroniclers to emphasize the importance of the Muslim
mercenaries in the Khazar forces, and the number of mosques in
Itil (forgetting to count the synagogues). .The legends which circulated
among Western Jews in the Middle Ages provide a curious parallel
to the Russian bylina..To
quote Poliak again: "The popular Jewish legend does not
remember a 'Khazar' kingdom but a kingdom of the 'Red
Jews'." And Baron comments:

The Jews of other lands were flattered by the existence
of an independent Jewish state. Popular imagination found
here a particularly fertile field. Just as the biblically
minded Slavonic epics speak of "Jews" rather
than Khazars, so did western Jews long after spin
romantic tales around those "red Jews", so
styled perhaps because of the slight Mongolian
pigmentation of many Khazars.31

11

Another bit of semi-legendary, semi-historical folklore
connected with the Khazars survived into modern times, and so
fascinated Benjamin Disraeli that he used it as material for a
historical romance: The Wondrous Tale of Alroy..In the twelfth century there
arose in Khazaria a Messianic movement, a rudimentary attempt at
a Jewish crusade, aimed at the conquest of Palestine by force of
arms. The initiator of the movement was a Khazar Jew, one Solomon
ben Duji (or Ruhi or Roy), aided by his son Menahem and a
Palestinian scribe. "They wrote letters to all the Jews,
near and far, in all the lands around them.... They said that the
time had come in which God would gather Israel, His people from
all lands to Jerusalem, the holy city, and that Solomon Ben Duji
was Elijah, and his son the Messiah."*[The main sources for
this movement are a report by the Jewish traveller Benjamin of
Tudela (see above, II, 8); a hostile account by the Arab writer
Yahya al-Maghribi, and two Hebrew manuscripts found in the Cairo
Geniza (see above, II, 7). They add up to a confusing mosaic; I
have followed Baron's careful interpretation (Vol. III, p.204;
Vol. IV, pp.202-4, and notes).] .These
appeals were apparently addressed to the Jewish communities in
the Middle East, and seemed to have had little effect, for the
next episode takes place only about twenty years later, when
young Menahem assumed the name David al-Roy, and the title of
Messiah. Though the movement originated in Khazaria, its centre
soon shifted to Kurdistan. Here David assembled a substantial
armed force - possibly of local Jews, reinforced by Khazars - and
succeeded in taking possession of the strategic fortress of
Amadie, north-east of Mosul. From here he may have hoped to lead
his army to Edessa, and fight his way through Syria into the Holy
Land. .The whole
enterprise may have been a little less quixotic than it seems
now, in view of the constant feuds between the various Muslim
armies, and the gradual disintegration of the Crusader
strongholds. Besides, some local Muslim commanders might have
welcomed the prospect of a Jewish crusade against the Christian
Crusaders. .Among the
Jews of the Middle East, David certainly aroused fervent
Messianic hopes. One of his messengers came to Baghdad and -
probably with excessive zeal - instructed its Jewish citizens to
assemble on a certain night on their flat roofs, whence they
would be flown on clouds to the Messiah's camp. A goodly number
of Jews spent that night on their roofs awaiting the miraculous
flight. .But the
rabbinical hierarchy in Baghdad, fearing reprisals by the
authorities, took a hostile attitude to the pseudo-Messiah and
threatened him with a ban. Not surprisingly, David al-Roy was
assassinated - apparently in his sleep, allegedly by his own
father-in-law, whom some interested party had bribed to do the
deed. .His memory was
venerated, and when Benjamin of Tudela travelled through Persia
twenty years after the event, "they still spoke lovingly of
their leader". But the cult did not stop there. According to
one theory, the six-pointed "shield of David" which
adorns the modern Israeli flag, started to become a national
symbol with David al-Roy's crusade. "Ever since,"
writes Baron, "it has been suggested, the six-cornered
'shield of David', theretofore mainly a decorative motif or a
magical emblem, began its career toward becoming the chief
national-religious symbol of Judaism. Long used interchangeably
with the pentagram or the 'seal of Solomon', it was attributed to
David in mystic and ethical German writings from the thirteenth
century on, and appeared on the Jewish flag in Prague in
1527."32 .Baron
appends a qualifying note to this passage, pointing out that the
connection between al-Roy and the six-pointed star "still
awaits further elucidation and proof". However that may be,
we can certainly agree with Baron's dictum which concludes his
chapter on Khazaria:

During the half millenium of its existence and its
aftermath in the East European communities, this
noteworthy experiment in Jewish statecraft doubtless
exerted a greater influence on Jewish history than we are
as yet able to envisage.